SocialCrafts aims to jointly establish innovative support structures, as a joint CB ecosystem, that will be encouraging and supporting the artisans of handicrafts who spread across the CB area to develop themselves systematically into a sustainable network of work integration social enterprises.

The members of this network will, ultimately, be able to share common resources and work together both on safeguarding and promoting the traditional techniques of the area, and on mobilizing underexploited human resources and offering jobs to people with disabilities and other vulnerable group members.

The key concern for SocialCrafts is to ensure that the envisioned “ecosystem” will be: sustainable, and a driver of equal opportunities and inclusive growth in the CB, raising awareness on the rights of vulnerable groups, building on the of the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discriminations against Women , etc.

Expecting results

The partners will commonly design and establish a number of services targeted to: existing creators of handmade artefacts in the CB area and persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups. SocialCB aims to establish a support mechanism based on IT, to allow the artisans of handicrafts who spread across the CB area to develop themselves systematically into a sustainable network for joining their efforts to create open market for their products. The envisioned network will constitute an effort to ensure that new social economy initiatives are accessible to all challenged citizens in the CB and in close proximity to their home or workplace.

Summary

Today, in response to urbanization and industrialization, many people around the world are interested in and enjoy handmade objects that are imbued with the accumulated knowledge and cultural values of the craftspeople and which offer a softer alternative to the numerous ‘high tech’ items that dominate global consumer culture. In the CB thanks to its rich cultural diversity, numerous expressions of such traditional handicrafts have evolved over the years: tools; clothing and jewellery; costumes and props for festivals and performing arts; storage containers, objects used for storage, transport and shelter; decorative art and ritual objects; musical instruments and household utensils, and toys, both for amusement and education. These, altogether constitute perhaps the most tangible manifestation of the CB area’s intangible cultural heritage. However, the artisans and artists of the area, who often come from the so called “vulnerable groups” (roma, disabled, families with many members, poor families, etc.), strangle both for their own survival and for that of their arts. They usually work alone or in very small groups with very limited access to support for better promoting and marketing their products and in general for developing themselves and their activities. The target groups of the project are vulnerable groups, such as persons with disability, roma population and professionally and financially challenged groups (women, youth, long-term unemployed, below poverty line households and other special social groups). A big population of them (i.e. persons with disability) via their representative associations in the partnership (NCDP, Kavala) are having a fundamental role in the Project, determining the aims and the directions of the actions (planning) & the development of these actions (implementation), expressing their opinions regarding the effectiveness of the services and the produced e-tools (evaluation) and being actually recipients of the produced Project outcomes (dissemination), ensuring at the same time the non-discrimination due to gender and disability.